Artifice
by electric caterpillar
Summary: Clear x surprise, rated for future content
1. Chapter 1

Covered faces were not uncommon in the soot-soddened city slums - civilians too poor to afford durable electronic skin shut themselves away from the brutal winter cold - survivalists and zealots carried on their backs a personal supply of fresh air - primadonnas refusing to be witnessed by the prole - criminals beneath Batou's pay grade to apprehend - but the child in the apple-green scarf, which seemed none of these, arrested Batou's attention utterly.

The child's body, evident beneath the bulk of his coats was very small, very young, his back straight, his movement fluid, the skin of his hands drawn taut over the knuckles - yet his hair and skin were white to be translucent - white like his. He could have been a ghost. In a city where elderly bodies were the apex of bad taste, that was remarkable.

And also, something in his gait, a lolloping, clumsy, uncertain tread frequently interrupted so the boy could investigate a friendly dog tied to a pole or a daisy persisting from between cracks in the pavement, set Batou ill at ease - and sore with compassion for him. Babies, while rare, were not so rare he'd never heard of them employed in cruel jokes, installed into adult bodies and released into the callous adult outside to cause mayhem.

It was beneath his paygrade, cleaning up after such banal evil, but Batou was not able to drive past the child which crouched at the pavement curb, head between his knees, as though crying.

"Hey," Batou said, and though he made his voice as slow and kind as a hound the child leapt and looked at him in what Batou guessed was alarm.

He could only guess, because the child's face was a gas mask, an old-fashioned black rubber monster with reflective glasses installed in the eye sockets, and the shock of that darkly vacant face combined with the extreme fairness of the child's loose uncombed curls and the descending sun showing dim gold through the little milk-white shells of his ears made Batou think of something aquatic, an eel larvae, an oarfish, the jellyfish which gather at summer's end to bloom beneath the moon.

Batou's astonishment almost registered in his face - almost - but he managed to consume it in his smile, which he made large, toothy and jolly.

"Hey," he repeated, his tone familiar as though he spoke to an animal, "what's up, buddy, are you all right?"

If the child replied, Batou didn't see it. That expressionless mask only directed his gently inquisitive reflection back at him, and beneath it, two hands Batou saw were too small to close around two of his fingers wrung each other as though distraught.

"Do you have somewhere to go?"

Mutely, the child looked down at his tiny hands, clasped tightly together across his knees, examined the marks in the tar between his boots, looked back up at Batou, bewildered, and the artless gesture, the helplessness of it cut Batou to the core.

"Come on," Batou coaxed, and offered up his own hand, "come on, now, I'll take you somewhere safe."

For a beat, the child only looked at Batou's hand as if in fascination. He touched the very tip of Batou's broad, rough thumb, feather-light, lilted his head at an almost imperceptible angle. His chin tipped and he seemed to examine Batou's face for an instant before lifting his own hand to his un-face, tapping twice with his long fingertip the bathysphere window of his right eye.

"Ah, yeah," Batou said indulgently, lifting gently but insistently beneath the child's thin fine wrist, "we're alike, huh? Come with me, son, come on, now, do you have anywhere safe I can take you to?"

He spoke - and when he spoke, Batou heard with a start and a thrill of relief and soft feeling that he was not upset, afraid or confused, and he said, beaming audibly,

"Ah, no," and the good temper, levity and essential sweetness of him shone out of his sound, and it kindled in Batou's diplomatic smile a tone of earnest tenderness. He laughed, not unkindly.

Decorum did not evade even brusque, brutal Batou so entirely for him to be comfortable demanding anything as carnal as the childs age, the pending of his parents, but he asked, "where are you going?"

"I'm not!" said the child, seeming fascinated by Batou's daring. He had grasped, perhaps unconsciously, the ends of Batou's fingers, and Batou urged him insistently upward until he stood in his shadow - how extremely small was he! He would have to tilt his chin to bite Batou on the breast, if he had a mouth.

Batou found his hand on his hip, a womanly pose or posture of prostelytizing.

"Come with me," said Batou again, very kindly, very kindly, "come with me, I know a safe place for young people with nowhere to go."

Batou expected to be explicitly repelled, a childish fit, demure hesitation, even just patronizing polite disinterest, but instead the child stood beaming in his gestures, and arranged that broad soft and alarmingly green scarf around his shoulders.

"Where are we going?"


	2. Chapter 2

The youth hostel, Batou discovered, had burned to the ground during the Christmas riot of the previous year, them both.

Against his gentle protests, Batou brought the child also to the only orphanage he knew, where the somber sister determined within minutes the child was not child enough to accept her care, and she watched Batou guide him out of her office with a cutting, probing, disapproving frown Batou did not like at all.

The overstuffed and odoriferous homeless shelter did not become him better; the child's clasped hands flew to his cheeks at the squalor of it, at the astonishing odor, the ranting, the confusion, the flaccid pricks wiggled in his direction, and Batou thought, privately, lest he frighten the child, there were broader, harder creatures than the translucent waif of boy-shape the sour-smelling drunken men with crusts of beard on their jaws and filth in their fingers would take advantage of.

Batou lifted the lad over a puddle of tepid vomit standing guard at the front door and they walked in discouraged quiet together to the car.

"It isn't good," - the child spoke to Batou without honorifics, without pretense, as if he spoke to his intimate friend, and it endeared Batou utterly to him - "I don't want to sleep in these places."

"You won't need to," Batou ushered to reassure him, and patted the lads hand where it lay in his slipshod knees - he dwarfed him, he could not stop seeing; the child could clasp Batou's knuckle in his entire fist like an apple - "you won't need to sleep there. We'll find you somewhere to stay."

"I can sleep in the park ..."

His voice was very high, wobbling, playful - Batou wasn't certain he was serious, but he reprimanded him with a pert pat any way. The child cried out theatrically as Batou scolded, "you can't. That isn't safe."

"I can sleep beneath the bridge ..." said the boy mournfully, curling his legs beneath him in the crinkled leather seat beside Batou, leaning in his seatbelts grasp like an ill-trained hound straining the lead. "It is safe ..."

"Son," began Batou, paused, assembled his compassion, descended from condescension into comradery and smiled brilliantly for the sniveling boy-child, "it isn't safe. If you believe it is, it's because you haven't seen what I've seen. I'm a police officer, all right?"

He nudged the boy's pliant hand. "All right?"

"All right ..." the boy conceded sourly.

"Believe me. It isn't good for someone your age to be out alone in this city at night." Waiting at a red light, Batou turned to consider the child perceptibly frowning at him, a curl of white waif in his gorgeous car. Batou smiled very wide, and he saw in the boy's composure the smile was slowly replied.

Sweet kid, Batou thought.

"I don't want to scare you," said Batou, "but you've got to understand bad things can happen. They happen all the time."

The child wiggled a little in acknowledgement, wove his fingers together, tucked his chin to consider the creation.

"To boys older than you. Bigger, too. Don't worry," Batou saw in the corner of his eye the light change and returned his attention to the road, the serpent of shining asphalt which leapt in a brilliant silver rainbow over the stew of the river, "don't worry, we'll find you somewhere to sleep."

"Where will you sleep?" asked the boy.

Batou grinned. He was so young.

"At my apartment."

"Ahh," he said, and his voice was radio pop, Coca Cola. "May I sleep with you?"

Batou couldn't help but laugh very loud. It was rueful. The sunlight rips in ripples of black water far below him were very beautiful; the reflection of sorbet shades of evening aurora he detected also beside him, in the mirrored glass of the boys eyes.

"'May you stay with me,' you mean."

"May I stay with you?"

"No, son," Batou said, very gently, "that would not be appropriate."

"It would not be appropriate," the boy repeated, and leaned his cheek on his hand to look out the window.

Batou stole a long look at the boys light, light, light hair - as white as his - wisps of stuff, cherub curls. They looked like widows, maiden and crone.

Batou willed his wonder, where is your home? Why won't you go to your father, little boy? Your grandfather? and then, softly, sadly, what does he do to you?

"No," Batou said, "but don't worry. We'll find somewhere for you."

Of course, they did not.


End file.
